Benefits and Perception of Dry Chilli Farmers in Online Marketing: Experiences from Karnataka State, India

In recent years e-commerce has found its way in agricultural sector in India, in line with other sectors, agricultural businesses have taken up e-marketing, or internet marketing. For implementation of agricultural marketing policy to bring an efficiency and transparency in the agricultural marketing system for efficient price discovery to benefit farmers, the initiation was taken by Government of Karnataka and the NCDEX Spot Exchange Limited in this direction.Unified Marketing Platform (UMP) an initiative by the state govt. launched in 2014 by the Rashtriya e-Market Services (ReMs). The present study attempts to assess the benefits and perception of farmers in online marketing of dry chilli in Hubballi and Byadgi regulated markets, about 60 online dry chilli farmers and 60 traditional farmers were selected. The descriptive statistics used to analyze the data. Total returns obtained by traditional farmers with Rs.30,585/acre and comparatively less than online farmers was Rs.34,525/acre. Percentage price of commodities across marketsin online marketing was more than traditional marketing price. In online marketing the infrastructures like lot entry, adequacy and time price information, wider market area, better price and SMS alert were adequate, gate entry, storage, computers, e-payment were partially adequate. Grading and cold storage were inadequate. Maximum number of traditional farmers preferred progressive farmers for market information followed by friends as source of information. Online farmers were used mobile phone as major source of information followed by newspaper. Majority of online farmers were involved in grading and got SMS registration, got remunerative price. Very few of traditional farmers had knowledge about banking, SMS registration and grading. Infrastructure for post-harvest management needs to be strengthening primary level on public-private partnership mode. There is need to create awareness about online marketing through training, campaigns and other extension activities to farmers.